Why Your Small Business Website Needs a Blog

The title of this article may be worded a little TOO strongly. There are some rare exceptions where and when your website may not need a blog component. For example, say you own a taxi service in an extremely rural community and the nearest “competing” taxi service is a couple hundred miles away. In a scenario like THIS, all you likely really need is a half-assed-built-it-yourself-at-GoDaddy website that’s optimized for a few key words or phrases and you’re likely good to go! (That is unless you want said website to be functional in any way, shape or form – but that’s a story for another time.)

Why? Because you’re a local brick-and-mortar type of business with practically ZERO direct competition. If people Google “taxi service(s)” locally, guess who wins? You do – because not only did the other team not show up, the other team doesn’t even exist!

If this roughly describes your situation then you can probably stop reading now and find a different article (hopefully here on this website) to read.

HOWEVER…

If you’re a small business in just about ANY other type of situation then you “need” a blog as a component to your website.

In very Atypical me fashion, I am going to keep this article quite brief because each of the reasons I’m about to mention could be, and likely WILL be, an article all by itself someday.

Reasons Your Small Business Website Needs a Blog

1. Google (and that other search engine) LOVE fresh content

And one of the EASIEST ways to add new content to a website on a consistent basis (especially if you’re not tech savvy) is to implement a blog component to the site.

Probably THE WORST things a business owner that wants to do well online can do is to ignore their website. And oddly enough, one of the FIRST things small businesses will tend ignore IS their website! I see it constantly.

In reality, this should be the ONLY reason I would need to list in order to persuade a business owner to jump on the blog bandwagon. Chances are incredibly good that your competition isn’t taking advantage of this simple solution to search engine optimization (SEO)! And honestly, if you are a business owner that is serious about beating out local competition, you should take steps in this direction YESTERDAY.

I am smart enough to know that most folks still aren’t “sold” yet, so here are a few other things to consider.

2. You will become the authority.

Think about this hypothetical situation briefly. You have just moved to a new town and you need to find a new veterinarian. After doing a quick Google search you discover there are MANY to choose from in the area. After taking a peek at a couple of their websites you find one that not only has all of the standard information you’d expect to find on a veterinary website but they also have a helpful article that gets published to their home page and their blog once a week. All of their weekly tips and tricks are extremely helpful and valuable to you as a pet owner.

You can see that they are going far above and beyond the normal call of duty in order to serve pet owners in their area. Not only are they providing MASSIVE amounts of value but, in order do this they MUST know their stuff, right? And who WOULDN’T want to do business with a place that not only CARES but are also unquestionably the local expert in that particular area?

Now take that formula that our hypothetical veterinary office implemented and apply it to YOUR business. It applies EVERYWHERE.

3. You’ll eventually gain a following that will willingly help your business grow

If you write regularly and are helpful enough to your audience (local and otherwise) there’s a really good chance you’ll build a following of people who actually LOOK FORWARD to reading what you have to say!

Now let me ask you this – if you find a real treasure trove of information, whether it’s a great blog, a great YouTube channel, a great traditional author etc, what is one of the first things you want to do (besides find more content they’ve created?!). SHARE IT! Right? If you gain a large enough following that starts to share your content FOR you….can you imagine the implications of that?

That’s all for now

I personally think that just these 3 reasons alone are strong enough to get any business owner started down the road of blogging. Heck, if that business owner is TRULY serious about winning Google in their geographic area, then reason number one should be enough.

And I’ll start to button up by saying that there are certainly many more reasons to for a small business to add a blog to its website.

What reasons can you think of? Feel free to leave a comment below and let me know.

By the way, speaking of sharing, if you know anyone that might like this article please feel free to pass it along in any way that you see fit. I hope that I have been helpful to you in some small way.